In honour of International Women's Day, women who changed the face of design

Inside the homes of interior designers

Looking into the real homes of those who eat, sleep and breathe interior design is an interesting exercise. The legend goes that fashion designers tend to wear black and chefs rarely cook outside their work kitchens, but it seems the exact opposite is true of interior designers, whose homes are of course the place where all the knowledge honed during work hours, is allowed its fullest expression. There is much to be gleaned from looking at how the experts live. Here are some of our favourites from the House & Garden archives.

'I got it off eBay for £200,' says Diana of the four-poster bed in the bedroom of her Oxfordshire home. 'I like using big furniture in small spaces because it gives the illusion that the room is larger than it is. Although I did have to take the finials off the bed posts, as they hit the ceiling.'

One of Diana's trademarks is to forgo curtains in favour of shutters. 'I had them made,' she explains, 'which I prefer because they are minimal and less light-excluding.' The walls are covered in 'Adam's Eden' by Lewis & Wood.

In the bathroom, a charming combination of painted tongue-and-groove panelling and 'Adams Eden' wallpaper by Lewis & Wood works beautifully with a windowsill full of red geraniums. Installing cupboards with mirror doors saves space, provides storage and makes the room feel larger and brighter.

Following his motto 'use something red and gothic in each room and you're all right', Nicky's collection for Oka has ogees, points, tracery and quatrefoils aplenty, offering the chance to recreate at least a part of his look. Here in the bedroom, 'The Original Orangery Stepped' bedside table works beautifully with the vertical floral border on the wall (a lovely decorative idea for older houses) and antique chintz bed canopy.

Nicky Haslam has created a perfect reading nook in the living room of his country house; near a window for reading by natural light during the day and next to a side table with a lamp for the evening; the bookshelves are framed by a collection of pretty plates. The 'Cloud' armchair is from his collaboration with furniture brand Oka and costs £2,475.

'Flowers play an essential role in enlivening my sitting room, ' says Nicky. 'I love massed, untidy bouquets of things in season, and try to keep the room's colour scheme in mind. I also dot single blooms around at random where needed. Almost anything can look good when it is framed well. I frame anything that appeals - postcards, let­ters, maps; everything but photographs. If I buy a small original of a picture, I'll frame a reproduction as well to make a pair if necessary. Behind the bust of Marie Antoinette is a group of sepia engravings of Old Master drawings. The whole lot cost about a fiver; but I framed them up "grand" in rubbed gilt.'

'A dirt-colour hair-cord carpet covers the floor, over which I have layered a white flokati rug from Greece. They are cheap as chips, and you can bin them when they're past it. The sofas are slip-covered in 'Jaisalmer' by John Stefanidis, a hard-wearing off­-white cotton. The covers are the same ones I had when I first moved in 40 years ago and they still don't need to be replaced.'

'Cushions, tablecloths, curtains and tie-backs that look deliberately 'wrong' or oversize give an instant jolt of character. There is no fussiness in this room. Just simply cut vertical and horizon­tal planes of pattern and colour, leading the eye onwards, with short punctuation marks of surprise or wit.'

For more advice and images of this house, see 'Nicky Haslam's Folly de Grandeur: Romance and Revival in an English Country House' (Jacqui Small, £40)

The rich, witty and wonderfully eclectic interiors of designer Nicky Haslam's sixteenth-century, gothic-revival hunting lodge have long been coveted by all of us here at House & Garden. The sitting room is small but perfectly formed.

'An informal sitting room should be a place where guests feel like they can put their feet on the furniture, with everything at hand,' says Nicky. 'Next to sofas should be a place to rest things at arm's length. This may seem like a silly detail, but it is an important one in practice.' A low Victorian bench, upholstered in petit point, takes the place of a coffee table.

For more advice and images of this house, see 'Nicky Haslam's Folly de Grandeur: Romance and Revival in an English Country House' (Jacqui Small, £40)

The alcove behind the door has been turned into a charming sleeping nook. Enclosed behind the curtain are shelves and a lamp for reading. The room is painted in Farrow & Ball's 'Lamp Room Gray', while the random-width floorboards were bought on eBay. Reclaimed drawers are used under the bed as storage.

Shunning our throwaway culture, interior designer Patrick Williams of Berdoulat Design used salvaged finds and traditional techniques to imaginatively restore his Victorian flat in east London. The plaster walls in the kitchen are sealed with beeswax to make them water resistant. A lover of good design, Patrick even decants his washing-up liquid into an old-fashioned Fairy bottle.

This dining room with its wonderful Victorian windows is simply furnished with an oak table and benches from Chest of Drawers in Islington. Attention focuses on the mise-en-scène above the chimney breast. Intaglio boxes are flanked by a covetable pair of sconces set with lime-green candles (find them at Bridie's shop Pentreath & Hall), above a pair of obelisks on the mantlepiece.

The sitting room of decorative artist and designer Bridie Hall's house features many of her own pieces, including the cowhide and beech 'Trav' chair and her 'Roman Emperor Intaglio Cases', which hang on the wall. These work with the Ikat and Kelim cushions to add a burst of colour to the blue/grey scheme.

On the mantle piece is 'The Scholar Set' - also by Bridie - a group of shapes based on the Platonic solids. All can be found at Pentreath & Hall, the Bloomsbury shop owned by Bridie and Ben Pentreath.

'"Squid Ink" from Paint & Paper Library is a colour we come back to again and again. I highly recommend it,' says Bunny of the paint she has used in the spare bedroom of her home. 'In a north-facing room the moody blue/grey makes the space feel cosy.'

'My husband's a bit of a "White Cube" man, while I'm more a colourist and a mood person,' says Bunny. In the family's drawing room, the walls are painted in Farrow & Ball's 'Hague Blue', while reading lights from La Lampe Gras illuminate a pair of chairs from The French House. The jute rug is from Tim Page Carpets.

Bunny Turner of design duo Turner Pocock is a designer who knows the power of opposites. Combinations of light and dark are what makes this north-facing room come to life. Primarily used as an evening and winter space, the mood is cosseting indulgence when the lights are low; but during the day, thanks to the white ceiling and curtains, the room feels airy, with its features defined. 'Since we had a baby, we live in here,' says Bunny. 'It's super comfy and inviting.'

'There is nothing less cosy than a room that feels too formal,' says designer Kit Kemp, whose signature flair for mixing playful colour pattern is much in evidence in her London sitting room. 'Never take things at face value; mix old furniture with new fabrics. Be as bold as you dare. An abundance of empty wall space can feel cold. I have combated this by layering some strips of old wooden panelling - which I liked for its aged patina - underneath framed artworks, including one by the artist Kathleen Hale.'

Interior designer Michael S Smith's modernist house in Los Angeles couldn't be more different from his previous home - a Georgian-style manor - but he loves its 'heroic' architecture and large volumes of space, which allow him to create 'sculptural compositions' with his furniture and art.

In the 'gallery room', Michael has complemented his classical collection with various twentieth-century pieces, among which are the 'Meander' coffee table by Mattia Bonetti and a pair of armchairs by Paul Dupré-Lafon. The giant burl wood sculpture is by Mira Nakashima.

When Douglas and his partner Julian Jackson bought this house in the Languedoc region of the South of France, it was a chance for him - a knowledgeable collector of textiles - to show off his stock of older pieces.

'I have always been an avid collector, and now their rich saturated colours sit wonderfully well in the shafts of sunlight of a southern home.' In the bedroom a French eighteenth-century tapestry hangs behind the copper bath.

Exposed stonework and brushed plaster give the dining room and kitchen an irregular finish that suits the feel of the house. The plaster finish was mixed locally in Anduze, but for a similar effect try using limewash in clay by Francesca's Paints.

The pendant lights in the kitchen are by Fontana Arte, while in the dining area a chandelier by David Chipperfield hangs above a Tom Dixon for Willer candelabrum. The rug was bought from eBay direct from the makers in Kyrgyzstan. 'It has been soaked by flooding twice since being here and has lost none of its intensity of colour.'

In Douglas's house in the Laguedoc he wanted a departure from his London home. Pink silk embroideries from the Swat Valley were the starting point for this living room. The colour is picked up in the lampshades and offset by the custom-made sofa, covered in an indigo Manuel Canovas fabric.

After restoring the Georgian details Douglas used furniture with a French bias and twentieth-century art to create an elegant ensemble.

Many different textures are seen against a background of paper-backed linen by Warris Vianni on the sitting room walls. The large, asymmetric bookcase, designed by Douglas, is made of bog oak, brass and straw marquetry. The two armchairs by Terence Robsjohn-Gibbings are covered in a custom-made fabric by Toyine Sellers.

'It's a touch of Duchess of Windsor,' comments designer Douglas Mackie of the Maison Jansen Louis XV-style writing table in the right hand corner of his Marylebone living room - the French firm of decorators numbered Wallis Simpson among its prestigious clients in the middle decades of the twentieth century, and were known for creating reproduction pieces like this, that are now highly sought after in their own right.

Mixing decorative eras with finesse, a Sandra Blow painting is flanked by a pair of twentieth-century, tortoiseshell chairs, bought from Michael Pruskin of the Pruskin Gallery and covered in a custom-made silk by Toyine Sellers. The tables and rug are of Douglas' own design.

The blue-and-white scheme of the dining room is based around the eighteenth-century painted French screen that hangs on the wall. The hand-painted blue design is 'deliberately not like wallpaper.' Paolo worked closely with the artist Dawn Reader to create this effect. Dawn is contactable through Nicholas Haslam.

'The room is naturally dark and is only ever used in the evenings,' says Paolo Moschino of the scheme in his country house. 'Therefore we went for darker, warmer colours, for which the point of inspiration was the nineteenth-century Bessarabian rug.'